


Everlasting Stain

by Tillays



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, F/M, Romance, Slice of Life, best friend support
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-21 04:28:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30016155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tillays/pseuds/Tillays
Summary: A volley-ball. An off-guard moment. And a stain on her skin, as if engraved with indelible ink.When she entered the gym, Fumiya Akemi didn't expect her daily life to be this turned upside down. Nor that in the violence of this shock, she would find a solution to all her problems. But with her best friend's crush for the volley-ball team captain on the one hand, and her determination to help her at all costs on the other, it doesn't take long for bonds to form, to forge and to link.A blessing in disguise.“You were quieter the other day.”“I was mostly stunned. Whose fault, I wonder?”
Relationships: Kita Shinsuke/Original Character(s), Suna Rintarou/Original Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello~  
> I'm kinda nervous but happy to finally be able to post this Haikyuu! fanfiction!! It's mainly a Suna x OC but there's also side pairings c: I hope you'll like it !  
> Please note that it's a translation of the french version I've been working on for months, so my english may not be perfect. So don't hesistate to correct any mistake you could see, I would be glad to improve my english!
> 
> Please enjoy! <3

The timid rays of the sun were fading away as Fumiya Akemi looked out of her classroom window at the immensity of the firmament. The persistent cloudiness appeared to wear even brighter red hues as the minutes went by, much more fascinating than her math class – it had to be said. And two algebra exercises later, they were already dying, suffocated by the rapidly falling half-light, reflection of an autumn already well underway.

This was one of the reasons that reinforced Akemi's belief that mathematics should never be in the last hour of the day at this time of year: night was falling faster than the bell seemed to be ready to ring.

A discreet glance at her classmates made her realize that, like her, many seemed more interested in the view through the windows than in the second-degree equations. And she couldn't say that this was surprising.

Every minute that passed and filled the outside of the room with deeper darkness reminded the girl that she didn't have the courage to walk home today. After she realized that her transport card had mysteriously vanished, even after having had to empty her entire bag in the classroom after her sports class, she had come to the simple conclusion that she had forgotten it in the gym locker room.

This in itself would not stop her from returning home and coming back next day to pick it up. After all, the subway station located only a few steps from Inarizaki – and, a few stations away, from her home – was only a comfort not to be underestimated. If she had lived further away, she might have rushed to the gym to pick it up and go home, but a certain laziness had kept her from doing so all afternoon.

But now that it had gotten all dark, she had to admit that this plan suddenly seemed much less attractive to her.

Like a gift fallen from the sky when she least expected it, lost in her inner dilemma, the bell rang from the corridor to signal the end of a day long enough to die. Her azure eyes hung her reflection against the window when she hurriedly stood up after roughly stuffing her notebooks into her bag, and it was this detail that sealed her decision: walking home was out of the question.

However, it was when Akemi saw the brush in the painting by a cursed chance that she remembered being on cleaning duty tonight. Devoid of any motivation, she slumped down on her desk, which did not fail to wring a smile from Mirui Kasumi's lips, her classmate that was sitting in front of her – and who was in cleaning duty with her.

"Don't worry Fumiya-san, we'll get rid of it real quick," she claimed with a smile.

* * *

Akemi never thought she was especially lucky or unlucky. It was not a transport card lost through a dark – yet not especially cold – night that could decide such a fact. She was certain that there must have been people with much worse karma than hers, in more or less nearby or remote areas. For her part, it was rather that there were good days and bad days.

And it seemed like today was a bad day.

The still-lit classrooms had guided her outside walk to the gym, as had all the streetlights on the walkway. The air, still surprisingly soft at this time of an autumn in Kobe, glided over her skin, while the veiled sky obscured the twinkling of the stars and moon. A potentially mundane evening for an early November. Potentially.

The lights in the gymnasiums cut across the horizon, a sign that there were still people around, and it didn't take her long to realize that the gyms were indeed used for sports clubs at the beginning and end of the day.

Not insignificant details. No doubt she should have thought about it more carefully before going inside. Perhaps she should have paid attention to the echoes of soles slipped and struck with unparalleled speed on the wooden floor. Perhaps she should have taken a step back from the repetitive sound of bouncing against the walls that echoed her eardrums, or from the volley ball lost in the night, a few meters from the front door.

Akemi only had time to become aware of the rustling of whipped air that was approaching, of the ball that split the gym with force and speed, penetrating her field of vision; that it was already too close to be avoided. The familiar colors of the blue and yellow ball spread out over her retina, and yet her reflexes flew in surprise as she remained motionless, paralyzed.

The impact was even more violent than she could have imagined it, during this short second of reflection she had been given. Akemi couldn't tell whether it was the momentum of the shock or the blow to the head itself that made her lose her balance, yet her body swung to the side despite herself.

"That was savage!" a voice rose through the gym, but she couldn't identify where it came from.

The lights were dancing all around her; shaking under her bluish eyes, in total confusion. Her head felt heavy, so heavy that she had to put a hand on it in a futile and unconscious attempt to hold it. Lancinating. Tearing. A car could have run her over that she wouldn't have felt a difference.

Silhouettes appeared in the middle of this vaporous landscape that she could no longer distinguish anyway. Voices shattered around her, as did her dignity, and seemed to bang vehemently against the walls of her painful skull. Akemi couldn't even think, couldn't even understand what had just happened. Still groggy, and without formulating the slightest response to the words that were probably addressed to her, she tried to get up. Unsuccessfully, this only worsened the torment of her head.

A hand slipped against her hip to hold her before her legs gave way, and this simple support was enough to bring back her senses little by little.

"Are you alright?" asked a visibly concerned voice.

Some gray hair appeared on her retina, followed by some brown hair, and others too colorful for her not to close her eyes.

Of course not; she wasn't alright.

Yet, unwilling to make the slightest effort to speak, Akemi nodded her head up and down. Head that was still throbbing.

"Suna, give her some water."

Her vision continued to become sharper and sharper, less and less dancing, and soon she became able to distinguish with greater precision the faces next to her. And of all the clubs that occupied the gyms after class, she had to come across the volleyball club. The most influential club in the school.

They were all more or less popular – especially after being in the finals of the nationals the year before – or at least enough for her to know their names, after those few months of her first high school year. With a distracted and confused look on her face, she watched Suna Rintarou retrieve one of their water bottles following the captain's request, before handing it to her.

"No wonder you don't have a girlfriend, Suna, if you knock girls out like that!"

"Shut up Tsumu, you don't have a girlfriend either."

Words kept mingling around her, yet all that mattered at that precise moment was the icy liquid that slid down her esophagus, allowing her to slowly come to her senses. No doubt that in a few minutes a shame so huge that she would wish she was dead because of that shot would overwhelm her, but for the moment she left that thought aside.

However, one thing remained certain. The next time she would leave her transport card at the lost and found and walk home.


	2. Chapter 2

Leaning against the gym wall and held upright by it, Akemi was slowly coming back to her senses. Time seemed to have passed at a crazy pace, as if long hours had just passed, yet it had only been a few short minutes since she got back up. Her mind gradually recovered, the teen had managed to sort out the situation a little, to understand that it was a spike serve that had found refuge against her skull, the very moment she entered the gym.

The lights had stopped dancing, the voices no longer mingled in an asphyxiating hubbub, and yet her head seemed ready to explode at any moment. The more she put a hand on the right side of her skull, the more she felt the bump forming in just a few minutes, and she wouldn't even want to imagine what she would look like when she will arrive home and what excuse she could use for her sister.

"Feeling better?" the team captain Kita Shinsuke asked, as most of the volleyball players got back to their training.

"I think so..."

"You should go to the infirmary."

He punctuated his sentence with a glance in Suna's direction, who was his back to them and visibly ready to resume training. He stopped mechanically, without even having to turn around. In a sigh, Suna turned around, before moving forward with a nonchalant gait, as if he had grasped the message.

"That's kind, but no need to, I'll just go home" she politely answered, while thinking that she would better bury herself when home. "I'll just have to pick up my transport card in the locker room, so that I didn't get hit for nothing."

The middle blocker's jaw tightened at the understanding of these words, while a certain almost imperceptible guilt flew over the surface of his olive-yellow eyes. Far from resentment, Akemi smiled at him with a smile to which he did not react, before moving away from the wall that actually kept her standing.

"Sorry for the inconvenience," she apologized sincerely, but unable to bow. "Just be careful, I'll… come back."

Yet the pain that was gradually beginning to fade woke up as she began to walk to the girls' locker room. All the volleyball members seemed to feel more sorrow for her than mockery, yet Akemi could obviously add this incident to her list of her _worst embarrassing moments_.

"Do you live far away?" Kita asked as he saw her stagger.

"Not really, it's fast by train."

The team captain gave an implied glance to the second-year player still at his side, who grasped the message without him even having to speak: his serve, his fault, his problem. And when Akemi reached their height again, with her precious – or cursed – card in her hands, she was surprised to see Suna still in the entrance of the gym. Her bag, which she had left voluntarily in order to retrieve it on the way, was in his hands, as he visibly was waiting for her return.

"Kita-san _told me_ to take you home," he explained, seeing the perplexity in her azure eyes.

And she didn't flinch, didn't ask the slightest question. Akemi just nodded her head as he told her that he was going to get his bags – to go home later, no doubt; after all, training had already started.

The fresh air on her face, as she walked through the doorway of the gym, made the girl feel way better. Her head was starting to get used to every step, becoming less painful with each passing minute, so that when Suna came back she could see completely clear in her mind again.

"I can go home by myself, y'know," she tried, vainly hoping to keep a modicum of dignity and erase her face from everyone's memories.

Obviously, this was a lost cause, but she had the right to believe it. Her interlocutor lowered his gaze in her direction, before shrugging his shoulders.

"Kita-san might have killed me if I had let you go home alone after knocking you out," he said nonchalantly.

"You could just have pretended you're taking me home because you feel guilty, y'know." Akemi answered, swelling her cheeks.

If Suna settled for another shrug and a sigh as an answer, the girl did not miss the tense features of his face, illuminated through the dark night by the gym lights that rested delicately on him. Despite his casual air, she was able to see some guilt – after all, he was not used to knock out classmates every day. And this impression was confirmed when he started to walk first, grabbing her bag in the process – which she had picked up when he went to get his things.

In normal time, Akemi would have protested to carry it herself. But right now, she had to admit that this evening she had neither the desire, nor the energy to do so. Her forces regained, in spite of her still heavy and painful head – and the bump which continued to swell – she followed him. As the impression he had left from the first seconds, he did not prove to be very talkative. From time to time, she saw him throwing a few glances at her, without saying anything.

If she was satisfied with the silence, which allowed her skull to some rest, she had to admit that it quickly began to become awkward. Especially on the train, where she was lucky enough to find a seat, but the high school student remained standing next to her, his back arched and his face turned towards the windows that offered a plunging view of the city of a thousand lights, his smartphone visibly more interesting than anything that could happen in the train.

Like his teammates, Suna Rintarou was already somehow popular within the school. If the various sports clubs were highlighted, in Inarizaki, they were not all as much as the volleyball club, especially since their final at the nationals the year before. Having practiced this sport during her middle school years, Akemi had been able to value their level, during the rare matches she had attended, during the beginning of her first year. And her best friend, Nagano Ritsuka, a player in the high school women's team, was even more excited to watch them play.

And it was precisely this reputation that seemed to make them difficult to approach. A year older than her, Suna seemed more inaccessible and colder to her at that moment, as the train doors opened once again and as he glanced at her, probably to make sure she was not supposed to get off here. Distant and concerned were a strange combination.

"It's the next one," she indicated in front of his insistent glance.

However, when they had to go down, and in spite of his apparent detachment, he grabbed again her bag, that she had left on her knees. The few hundreds of meters that separated them from her home seemed even longer than those which connected Inarizaki to the train station, and this silence for the least awkward and stifling was obviously the reason of it.

"So, you qualified for nationals, right?" she asked, even though it was without a doubt the stupidest question she could have come up with.

Of course, she knew the answer: not only had she seen their game, but when they had won the prefectural qualifiers, the whole school had been talking about it. This head injury was obviously more disturbing to her than she thought so. Suna however threw an interested glance in her direction.

"Yeah," he answered, before pausing. "The qualifying teams are often the same from one tournament to the other."

"That's a bit pretentious, y'know."

Akemi didn't miss the smug smile that blossomed at the corner of his lips, lit by the streetlights that lined the street in her neighborhood. These were more teasing words than serious ones, because deep down he was right. The best teams usually came back from one tournament to another, she knew that very well – and Ritsuka didn't fail to often make her remember.

Before she could say anything else, she was already able to see her house. It somehow was strange to come home with a stranger: it was the feeling of being in front of the familiar house that made her realize it.

"Even if it was mostly to avoid getting killed, thanks for walking me home, Suna-senpai."

He frowned at the honorific used.

"Wait, you're a first year?"

A nod of approval, and Akemi was already reaching for her bag, not caring about the surprise on her elder's face – after all, what kind of senpai would knock out his juniors like that? He slipped a hand into the back of his neck, before a long sigh escaped him, as if he had been holding it in all the way. He was even less expressive and harder to figure out than she could have imagined…

"Sorry. For the ball, I mean," he finally dropped.

_That was hard to say._

"It's okay, it's my fault. I should have been more careful when I went in, anyway."

"The twins will talk about it for the rest of my life," he sighed. "You feeling better, though?"

"Yeah, walking and getting some fresh air kinda helped. You will be just responsible for the second head which grows on the first one," she said, as seizing without the least embarrassment his hand, to pose it on his bump.

"Wow, that's something," he spontaneously said.

Indeed, he might have hurt her much more than he thought, actually – the kind of details he was better off keeping to himself, so his teammates wouldn't find out about. Suna would have preferred the twins to be in the path of the ball during this service training session, although aiming for the gym entrance had not been his goal in the first place. The mere prospect of the comments he would be entitled to the next day awakened in him a certain laziness and removed all his motivation.

His fingers left the swollen skull of the girl in front of him. With a little hindsight, it had to admit that the situation was rather laughable. Certainly, if he had found himself filled with a certain fright while seeing her falling right under the blow, the muffled laughter of Atsumu beside him at this time had not escaped him. And now that he thought about it, he kind of understood him.

"Well, bye," said the girl next to him, whose name he didn't even know.

He answered a quick "yeah", before she turned to disappear behind the small gate of the house they were in front of. He remained thus alone in a neighborhood he did not even know. And for having followed her mechanically from the train station, he had only a quick idea of the road by which they had come from.

What a weird evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gotta admit that I'm kinda nervous about posting this fanfiction, especially with my english lmao. But I hope you've liked this second chapter~ don't hesitate to leave kudos if you did c:  
> And don't hesitate to leave a comment, I'm really curious about people's opinion <3

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you've liked this first chapter!! I'll try to publish the next ones as soon as possible! Don't hesitate to let me your opinion, it’s reeeally important for me <3


End file.
